My book's review: "Programming Microsoft Dynamics Nav 2013 by David Studebaker"

"Nice book, for beginners & experts NAV developers"

Positive notes
The book is suitable for those who want to start programming with NAV 2013, does not require a previous technical knowledge, even those who are new to the NAV environment and NAV C/AL can learn a lot from this book; is a book for everyone.

Interesting is the chapter on the development with Dynamics NAV 2013, the book explains in detail all the objects of NAV 2013 and how to use them: tables, pages, queries, reports, codeunits,  xlmport, web services technology etc..  with examples of creation and management for each object.

The chapter about C/AL shows the old (Nav4..Nav2009) and the new functions introduced with NAV2013, is a good reference for the NAV developer, the use of real cases makes it interesting. Also the section on NAV web services exposed with XML ports technology is well-argued.

My favorite chapter is the fifth (that relating to queries and reports), the query designer and also the RDLC technology is well explained with examples of how to create queries and reports. The NAV 2013 debugger is well covered with examples of the use on local servers, on remote NAS servers and on Web Services (the developer is able to perform functional tests in detail with the debugger following the directions of the text).

Negative notes
The NAS (NAV Application Server) is treated in a single half-page; every developer should know how to use the NAS and how you use posting queues with the NAS.

Perhaps the book is a bit 'too long' (600 pages), the theory part of ERP systems,  the development methodology (testing, deploy, project implementation guidelines etc. ...about 100 pages) maybe they could be material to another book of projects implementation.

In conclusion I would say that the overview of topics covered in the book is broad and comprehensive, more than enough for even a novice programmer who wants to explore NAV's world.


Rating: 4/5 stars, nice book anyway

Roberto Stefanetti
Microsoft Community Moderator

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17328767-programming-microsoft-dynamics-nav-2013

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/612591964